Fully-funded Penn St. provides tall task

Sophomore Jenna Zito competes in the all-around for the Scarlet
Knights, averaging a score of 37.743 and topping 38 five times with
a season-high 38.475.

By Kyle Franko

Associate Sports Editor

It is crunch time for the Rutgers gymnastics team.

The Scarlet Knights have a stern test when they travel to State
College, Pa., for a quad-meet with Penn State, New Hampshire and
Bridgeport.

Rutgers head coach Chrystal Chollet-Norton said her team is
excited for the challenge that the meet presents.

"It is a very important meet and the girls are really excited,"
she said. "It's an away score that we need to qualify for USA
Nationals and I expect it to be a high scoring meet."

RU (5-12) is coming off its two best meets of the season, the
latter of which is a 187.500-183.500 victory over SUNY Cortland.
Prior to the victory over the Red Dragons, the Knights posted a
season-high score of 189.575 in a second place finish at a home
tri-meet with Pittsburgh and Yale.

Senior Latara Northcutt will return to the floor exercise after
only participating in the vault the previous two weeks due to a
knee injury. Northcutt will still be a scratch from the bars and
beam, Chollet-Norton said.

With Northcutt absent from the all-around for the last two
meets, freshman Nicole Schwartz picked up the slack in the
all-around, securing a second place finish in the all-around with a
score of 37.750. It was only the second time Schwartz competed in
the all-around in her college career.

"It's nice to get Latara [Northcutt] and Nicole [Rose] back on
the floor," Chollet-Norton said. "It gives us some depth, which is
positive, but it's just a shame that the injury bug hit us because
we would be a much stronger team."

One of the issues that concerns Chollet-Norton is the resources
that other teams have at their disposal. Both Penn State and New
Hampshire are fully funded programs with more scholarships than RU.
Bridgeport is a Division II program where gymnastics is counted as
an equivalence sport, making funds more readily available.

At RU it does not make a difference whether the amount of money
given is a full-ride or $1,000; it still counts as one of the 12
scholarships Chollet-Norton has to offer.

"It's very difficult to compete against schools like that," she
said. "I feel like we are starting to get there — getting extra
dollars and taking the program to the next level."

The Nittany Lions (5-3) have competed against the nation's most
elite completion and enter the meet ranked No. 17 in the country.
New Hampshire (10-3) has been dominant at times this year and holds
a road victory over North Carolina. The Wildcats defeated the
Knights in their Jan. 10 home opener.

Bridgeport (8-5) is the No. 1 ranked team in Division II and
holds a victory over RU in a quad-meet held at Temple earlier this
season.